


11 Reasons You’ll Definitely Regret Finding Roommates On Craigslist

by Icefall



Category: Baccano!
Genre: Epistolary, Gen, Humor, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 15:20:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21654586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Icefall/pseuds/Icefall
Summary: An intrepid Buzzfeed reporter rents a spare bedroom in Manhattan.
Relationships: Isaac Dian/Miria Harvent
Comments: 35
Kudos: 71
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	11 Reasons You’ll Definitely Regret Finding Roommates On Craigslist

**Author's Note:**

  * For [atomicpixiedust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/atomicpixiedust/gifts).

> [Podfic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23737414) by Rhea314

** 11\. You Will Be Forced To Acknowledge That There Are People Who Still Use Craigslist In 2019.**

And you’re one of them. In your defense, you’re desperate. You’re probably some starry-eyed kid from New Jersey, fresh out of college and flipping your shit over the fact you landed a part-time job as a _journalist_ _in_ _New York City_. Life’s about to become a high speed montage of hot dates and lavender matcha lattes.

That is, as long as you can afford rent. Enter stage left a Craigslist ad for a spare bedroom in Upper Manhattan for only $1200 a month. You mortgage your student loans and pack the U-Haul. You’ve heard serial killers tend to be highly organized, and you hope that means you won’t have to deal with dirty dishes in the sink.

** 10\. Your Roommates Will Be Eccentric. Like Really Eccentric.**

They’re a guy and a girl, maybe mid-twenties, and you can’t tell whether they’re an item or not because the messages they send are more mixed than the twenty dollar cocktail you shouldn’t have had last night. But what you can tell is they are _weird_.

Case in point: Their room. You don’t mean to wander in while they’re out. But the door’s cracked, and you’re pacing around trying to think of ideas for your next top ten list, when you see something that reminds you why you swore off weed brownies in college.

Is that an adult size Easter bunny costume on their bed?

(Yes. Yes it is.)

Next thing you know, you’re opening their closet, and it is _packed_. African masks. Cheap polyester vampire cloaks. Hospital scrubs. Prison jumpsuits. 1930s formalwear. And a bright yellow motorcycle helmet that clonks you on the head when you try to slam the door back shut. 

They must be performers, or costume-makers, or _something_.

But hey, at least they’re not furries.

** 9\. Strange Objects Will Appear and Disappear From Common Areas.**

Look. You’re as messy as the next person. But your mess is more dirty socks and pizza boxes, and less… ornate samurai armor, impressionist oil paintings, and crates of wholesale Roma tomatoes?

No seriously. That’s the exact potpourri of bullshit that’s been rotating through your shared living room over the past few weeks like some kind of postmodern art installation.

You really should confront them on it. You really should at least _ask_. But you don’t.

Free tomatoes are a hell of a perk.

** 8\. They Will Be Grossly In Love With Each Other (And Grossly In Denial.)**

You figure they must be a couple after the whole there’s-only-one-bed-in-their-room-and-also-an-Easter-bunny-costume fiasco. Unfortunately, you figure wrong.

It starts with the guy cornering you after you get back from the bodega, asking you if you have feelings for the girl. You say you don’t, he says he doesn’t either, and then he threatens to “beat you up” if you make a move on her.

Real subtle. You chalk it up to his insecurity and spare a prayer for a brother in the friendzone.

Until a week later, when the girl corners you as you’re exiting the bathroom and repeats the entire performance, right down to the threat of physical violence.

Not your dumpster fire, not your rapidly combusting garbage.

On the plus side, at least they realized you’re bi.

** 7\. Their Exciting Lives Will Make You Feel Inadequate.**

Maybe it’s how they come and go at odd hours in wacky costumes. Maybe it’s the shiny black Lincoln Navigator that pulls up in front of your building every Wednesday. Maybe it’s the invitation to the Met Gala you saw stapled to the back of a pizza advertisement and thrown in the trash.

Whatever it is, it’s making you wonder if being an internet slave writer is the be-all, end-all of life satisfaction in the twenty-first century.

** 6\. You Will Think They Are Drugging You Because You Will Start Hallucinating.**

One night you get home late to find the guy slicing tomatoes at 3 am. Apparently you startle him, because the knife slips and he cuts a nasty gash into his thumb.

And then the blood _runs_ _back up the knife and the wound seals shut_.

You wonder if those weed brownies in college had permanent effects.

** 5\. You Will Get Arrested.**

You’ve never been arrested before, and it’s actually even worse than you were imagining it to be. Because when you were imagining it, you were imagining getting taken in for underage drinking or recreational marijuana.

You weren’t imagining a full SWAT team busting down your door on a Tuesday evening while you’re making hot cocoa for your roommates.

You know all that shit in your living room?

It’s stolen.

And that’s why, in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, you’re sitting in an overnight holding cell at the NYPD, making small talk with Courtney the crackhead, and _she’s_ the one uncomfortable to be around _you_.

And no, officer, you really don’t know where your roommates are right now.

** 4\. You Will Get Off With A Warning.**

When the officer brings you your morning bagel, he tells you that you’re free to go, provided you give him the courtesy of meeting with someone first.

You’re ready to give him a heck of a lot more than a courtesy if it means getting out, so you let the officer lead you through a maze of hallways to a spacious office with a dark wood desk and floor-to-ceiling windows.

The man behind the desk smiles at you, and asks how you’re liking New York City, and very politely suggests that you refrain from publishing the names and faces of your roommates in any form of media.

You don’t understand how anyone can be that intimidating with a baby face and a green suit.

** 3\. You Will Run Home To Your Mother.**

Because screw New York City.

Central Jersey may be a sprawling dystopian wasteland of highways and strip malls, but the rent is free and your parents don’t keep stolen property in the living room.

** 2\. You Will Realize Those Roommates Are The Best Thing That Ever Happened To You, And You Will Probably Never Feel That Alive Again.**

It hits you in the late evening while you’re meeting a high school friend for coffee at a strip mall Starbucks. You’re telling her about the night you got arrested, and she’s drinking it in, hanging on every word. It feels good. Really good. And you realize that this, _this_, is what you went into journalism for.

And then you drain the last drops of your caramel macchiato. And your friend leaves to meet up with her fiancé. And you drive home, take out the trash, turn off the lights, and climb under the covers of the bed your mom never took out of your childhood bedroom when she started converting it into an office.

You lie in the dark. And you know. You know. That in New York City, you brushed up against the edge of something great and terrible and wonderful. But that’s all it was.

A brush.

** 1\. You Will Get Over It.**

Because everyone gets their brush. And they all go on living, and so will you.

Your great grandpa tells you this, in his own words, when you visit him in his peeling farmhouse in eastern Pennsylvania. You sip black coffee at the little table next to his favorite recliner, and he tells you about when he was young. He’d moved to New York City to work as a security guard at a fancy museum, and he'd had an apartment and a paycheck and a girl across the hall who blushed whenever he winked at her. And then two months into his job, he was fired.

He ran home to Pennsylvania to work on the farm, met his wife, and had three beautiful children. He said losing that job ended up being the best thing that ever happened to him.

So you’ll get over it. You’ll go on living. You’re not the first or the last starry-eyed kid from New Jersey to try to make it in New York City. And as bad as your roommates were, they don’t hold a candle to the crazies your great grandpa went up against.

Because the reason he was fired? Apparently, halfway through one of his regular shifts, a pair of lunatics stole the museum door.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [11 Reasons You’ll Definitely Regret Finding Roommates On Craigslist by Icefall [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23737414) by [Rhea314 (Rhea)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhea/pseuds/Rhea314)


End file.
